Rust and Shoulders
by slack-jawed cheese hugger
Summary: Tove is itchy, or, as he calls it, rusty, and even though he hasn't done THAT in a really, really long time he manages it correctly. "Is it normal for humans to see in so few colors?" he asks Bea, who now has a headache.


Tove sighed

Disclaimer: I do not own Tove, Bea, or Lunar Knights/ Bokura no Taiyou. Nor do I own Cascade. However, I do own my interpretation of Tove -grins-

All right! So today I'm in, uhh… Oregon… Yesterday we went through these mountains and the sun was setting. Then suddenly we got into this big, huge cloud of smoke! It was apparently from the Telegraph fires. Weird, but the smoke filtered the light so there was a red glow from the sunset, way up by the sun, but then there was another, more red-orange than pink, glow, further down by the horizon. I know for a fact it was the light of the fires.

I'm so sorry.

If you had to evacuate your home because of the fires, I'm really sorry… I hope you're all safe.

Note: These fires are occurring now (I'm pretty darn sure they are, anyway) in northern California, which is a state in the United States that encompasses the majority of the Pacific coastline that is part of the USA. These fires happen every year, but sadly there are people living in high-risk areas where there are often forest fires. Another example of these summer wildfires would be the Angora forest fires down by Lake Tahoe.

I wish you all safety and luck.

--m--

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**Rust and Shoulders**

--m--

Tove sighed. The sewers were wet, sure, but there wasn't a lot of sun. It was so damp and it really bothered him; it got between his toes and between his shoulder blades and in places he couldn't reach, even with his long claws. He frowned, turning to try and see what was on his back that was annoying him so much.

He gasped.

Rust!

He was rusting!

Oh _no!_

The earth terrennial made a little sobbing sound as he twisted as far as he could to reach the patch of rust that was on his back, but no matter how he tried he couldn't reach it! It was simply infuriating.

Giving up, Tove sat down on the side of the bathtub, alligator-claws lazy at his sides. From what he could figure out, the only way to get this off was _that_. And he hadn't done _that_ in such a long time that he wasn't sure how well it would work, or if it would work at all… Toasty-san did it all the time, he mused, and he had no problem with it. But it had been such a long time since he did _that_ that he didn't even remember what he looked like when he was doing it.

He grumbled irritably and sat in the empty bathtub, right in the middle, so he'd have plenty of space, and then closed his eyes.

It felt weird, doing _that_, and he giggled. He could feel the stretching but he didn't really mind because it didn't hurt, and as he gave _it_ a final push, he burst out laughing, and as the muscles in his face pulled his mouth into a grin, he realized that it had worked.

Tove's eyes snapped open. "Whoa, hey," he said out loud, before laughing at how he sounded, even to himself, "I see in fewer colors! _Weird!"_

"Hey, Tove, what are you--" Bea stopped dead when she got to the open door. Her mouth dropped open at the sight of him. "Uh, hi," she gaped, "have you seen Tove? Dunno what you're doing in the Guild's bathroom, but…."

He gave a shriek of laughter. "Aw, Bea! You silly! It's me, smartypants!"

"_You?!"_ she gasped incredulously. "Tove, what did you _do?"_

The young man wearing a colorful wrap and holding a gnarly old walking stick shrugged. "I did _that_. Toasty-san does it all the time, even without Aaron-chan, right?"

"So-" Bea cleared her throat. "You mean you…" She scratched her head. "Huh?"

Tove shrugged. "Well I couldn't reach this place between my shoulders where I was gettin' all rusty and stuff between my shoulder blades and I figured I may as well do _that_ after all this time 'cuz all the others do it too, right, and so I did the stretchy part right and so now I'm here and I can reach just fine, see?" He reached up and backwards, scratching at the bit of skin between said shoulder blades. "But I can't see in as many colors. Is that normal? It's weird… I can't see my floaty, either…" He looked up at her inquisitively. "That how you see things? Can you see my floaty? It's green, and it gets everywhere, and I can't get it off even though that bottle said it got invisible grime off and I asked the nice lady with the ears like this-" he put his arms up so they poked out from behind his head in a strange imitation of Alice's ears- "-if she could see my floaty and she didn't know what I was talking about and invisible means you can't see it, right, so if she couldn't see it then it must be invisible so the bottle must be wrong and--"

"Tove?" said Bea weakly. "I think… Did you find someone's Chocolate again? I told them not to leave it around, you're not supposed to have sugar."

"Nuh-uh," insisted Tove. "I got rust on my back-part. Lookit!" He twisted in the bathtub and tugged the back of his wrap down a bit, showing her a stretch of skin.

Bea blushed furiously and thanked whoever was up there that he didn't care about things like that. "Yes, Tove, you have a very nice back. What about it?"

He scrambled to his feet, a bit wobbly and unsure, but then straightened up. "I got rust!" he proclaimed. "I hate rust… it's tingly and I can't get it to go away and I can't reach it with my claws." Frowning a bit, he scratched his back, sighing blissfully. "Okay," he chirped. "Rust all gone!"

"Rust…? Um, Tove, I think that's just itchiness."

Tove looked up at her. "Izzat what it's called… See, I asked a bridge once what it was and it said 'rust'," Tove said, speaking the last word in a very deep and grumbly voice, stretching it out until it was nearly ten syllables long, making air quotes with his fingers.

The poor woman blinked and nodded distractedly. "O-okay," she said in a very high-pitched voice, like she had a headache. "I'm just going to go lie down now. You ask Kay if you need something, all right?" She tottered out of the room, holding a hand to her forehead.


End file.
